STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS REVIEW–Back To The (Stupid) Future

ALL SPOILERS ALL SPOILERS ALL SPOILERS

———————-You’ve been warned————————-

So I saw Star Trek Into Darkness (STID) last night.  Greg and I also saw The Darkness in Lancaster, PA, a few weeks back.  They were awesome.  Justin Hawkins is the sole remaining living embodiment of Rock and Roll.  He literally climbed the walls and rode around on some guy’s back.  I personally would like to see the new cast of Start-Wreck (cause a lot of things were wrecked in this movie) join The Darkness–or more precisely, vice versa.  Frankie Poulain would make a mean-looking first officer.

Anyway, I kinda think I saw this movie before, but backwards.  Kirk dies in the warp chamber, and Spock screams “KHAN!!!”.  Okay, so it was decent.  I do like the new cast, particularly Karl Urban as Bones and Chirs Pine as Kirk.  I think Kirk makes a few “unKirklike” choices in the movie, including one part where he whines that he doesn’t know what to do, yet mostly, he does fulfill that poster: he can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome he believes he is.  He also signs on to assassinate Khan early in the movie, but that’s just not Kirk-style.  There was a robot dude on the bridge, I suppose a tribute to Data in Next Gen, but at first I thought he was a Deltan.  You don’t really know until you see some big Matsumoto dial sticking into the back of his head.  Well, maybe he’s a cymol–human with a robot brain, I think Jack Chalker came up with the term back in the 80s.

The best character by far has to be the diminutive, speechless alien that Scotty refers to as a walking oyster.  I was thinking cabbage, really, or Nien Numb from Jedi.  I would say that he’s Scotty’s mini-me, except that Scotty doesn’t look like an oyster.  He was fairly pickled in once scene, though.  It really does sound like the ghost of Jimmy Doohan.  The all-time best though was Peter Weller–that’s right, Buckaroo Freakin’ Bazai!  Man, he looks old.  Sorry, Buckaroo, we love you like nobody’s business.  Blue Blaze irregular here in the Garden State.  But why’d you have to try to blow up James Kirk?  And your own daughter?  Sheesh.

So you know that this movie is basically Wrath of Khan all over again, except that Khan doesn’t die, he just gets turned back into a popsicle after they use his blood to bring Kirk  BACK FROM THE DEAD.  That’s right, folks.  And he wasn’t even wearing a red shirt (Checkov was though).  Kirk is now a zombie, who, along with an army of reanimated tribbles, will attempt to eat yer brainz in the middle of the night!  Or the next movie.  Well, he might try to eat Carol Marcus first.  Yummy, though you would rather see a little meat on her bones.  (Ahnold: Vhat have you been feeding dis theeeng? Kirk: Blondes….)

I liked the Klingon face-spine ear piercings.  Uhura claimed to speak Klingon, but hey, we’ll never really know, since she just could have had a bad cold with a lot of mucus.  What do Klingons call their face-spines anyway?  If a kid gets food on it, what do the Klingon parents say?  Oh, yeah, that’s right…nobody can tell because it seems like they are just having a tasty cold.

In short: much better than the first Star Trek reboot, which I liked.  It’s neat to watch the good ol’ NCC-1701 go atmospheric, but you know they stole that off the BSG reboot.   One lingering question: if most of Starfleet’s Senior Staff was machine-gunned (err, layered) by Khan in the Khan-ference room, who is left actually in charge of Kirk?  And why exactly are they sending him on a five-year mission when war with the Klingon empire is so apparent?  Well, maybe they ARE building ten more ships of the Andromeda class to take on the White Comet, that would do it.  Oh, wait….that was StarBlazers….I would like to see ten Andromeda class ships go up against the Klingon D4s, though, they seemed much more wimpy than the D7s of yore.

New Movie Etiquette

Been to the movies lately?  It’s not so much the $10-$12 admission price, or the $7 popcorn (stuff yer face at home before you come) but the messages about cell phones and PDAs needing to be shut off that’s troubling.  The latest incarnation has this guy trying to get his script produced, and he gets all these phone calls…until the last one, which ruins the whole thing.  Somehow.  And there’s a monkey in it.  Are we supposed to feel bad for this guy?  I’m sure he’d be getting a fair chunk of change to get the rights for his script.  Plus, he’s hanging out with a monkey. 

I agree with the sentiment, there’s enough noise going on in a packed theater without the need for technoscreech as well.  Cell phones have their uses, but the hands-free models that stick in your ear are a little freaky.  They make it look like you’re talking to yourself.  Are you possessed?  Are you a Zombie?  One of the Borg?  Part of a Hive Mind?  Glassy-eyed, straight-ahead staring muttering people brushing past each other in hallways and supermarket aisles…no one can be told what the Matrix is, right?  You have to see it for yourself…I think you already have….